Another Approach to a Local Fire

originally written on 09-26-08 as part of “The Fire”
cut from original poem and edited into new poem on 10-26-08

When I walked over and talked with the third floor guy
who hadn’t even moved in yet but rushed down to that
room where all the flames started when he smelled smoke,
then trying to put out the mattress but it was all on fire, not
stopping for anything, he quietly said little and walked away.

Long after the old obese woman was given air and shoved off
into an ambulance, the image of the dog form first appeared.
It was passing by on a stretcher designed for humans, and it
was not moving, a plastic oxygen mask over its hair-lined mouth,
dangling somewhat around the edges of its contorted canine face.

The onlookers moved by in a bubbly mass of shadows, slowly
and dance-like as this incapacitated Pagan figure, godlike perhaps,
flushed on through, the crowd parting like a ripple in a pool,
a balanced knife-like space down the middle of an open sea,
the stagnant streetlamps catching the waves of limbs and

starry-eyes overcome by the spliced emergency blues and reds, the
people not getting it enough, the crowd not opening wide enough.
A grizzly hero shouted “make a hole, make a hole.” And a hole
formed, the idol or puppet figure, symbol of hope and absurdity
moving people to tears, I’m sure, thousands of tears sitting on cheek.

Some of us were not part of that specific crowd, should not even
have been there to begin with, but that part of the story gets left
behind as I turn silent to my friends and sip Carlo Rossi, smoke
a Maverick, my voice’s echoing booms slowly becoming forgotten,
drunken evenings in Bristol becoming recycled less, forgotten more.

When glancing outside, a person such as any one of us could notice
that cop-car lights still remained, hours having passed, and the road
nothing more than closed, except to local traffic, naturally, and
upon leaving the comfort of one’s home, a person might walk over,
notice the firetape’s yellow sitting still, like neon laser beams,

tripwires, electronics. After watching a movie we all walked over
to the site, drunk and merry, completely unwelcome to the vacancies.
We saw the big gaping blackburnt porches, those two firemen losing
their minds in boredom, and a lone cop who talked about arson as a
possibility, always a possibility, if you could believe it under this moon.